Evidence vs. Ideology: The Canadian Conservative Government's War on Science

Canada has entered an era of decision-based evidence-making, where scientific and other evidence takes a back seat to an ideology of political partisanship in the service of economic development and “prosperity.” Where once we could hope that scientific evidence would play an important role in decision making in such areas as public health, resource development and environmental stewardship, this no longer seems to be the case. Using tactics such as the drastic budget cuts to government science departments, the muzzling of government scientists who want to discuss their research in public and turning government scientific infrastructure into a concierge for industry, the Conservative government is waging a War on Science. This presentation will look at some of the major causes, strategies and skirmishes in the war as well as some prospects for a ceasefire and perhaps even a fair and just peace.

The campus online newsletter has a nice preview story about it here, including a picture of me from last year's Death of Evidence mock funeral I helped organize as part of the Libraries' Scholarly Communications Committee.

Doing the talk was a great experience and definitely a great honour to be asked to take part in this kind of seminar series. I'd like to thank Institute members Kean Birch and Denielle Elliott for inviting me to take part as well as all the various member of the Department and the Institute for making the arrangements so smooth.

If anyone is interested in what's going on in Canadian science these days and would like me to deliver this talk or some approximation, I'd be happy to oblige. You can contact me at jdupuis at yorku dot ca.

More like this

As you can all imagine, I'm quite pleased to see the backside of the Harper government on their way out the door. Of course, the Liberals have promised a lot but only time will tell how serious they are about fixing the science-related stuff that they've promised to fix. I'll definitely be watching…

Just a quick post to get a recent set of presentation slides up here on the blog.
Earlier this week a colleague in the Science and Technologies Studies program here at York hosted me in her fourth year undergraduate seminar class. Rather than my accustomed and normal role of librarian (I happen to…

2012 was a year of Open Access advocacy for me. I published a ton of posts that year generally around the loose theme of making the scholarly communications ecosystem fairer and more open. In 2013 I did a little of that too, for sure.
But with a lot of the effects of the Conservative government's…

I've been thinking a lot about this the last week or so, with media appearances already out there and more to come. The list of links I've amassed is quite impressive, a significant number to add to the post highlighting Sarah Boon's advice. But that was a week or so ago, which seems like an…

Advertisment

Donate

Scienceblogs is part of Science 2.0, a pro-science outreach nonprofit operating under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Please make a tax-deductible donation if you value independent science communication, collaboration, participation, and support open access.

You can also shop using Amazon Smile and though you pay nothing more we get a tiny something.

More by this author

As of November 1st, 2017, ScienceBlogs is shutting down, necessitating relocation of this blog.
It's been over eight years and 1279 posts. It's been predatory open access publishers, April Fool's posts and multiple wars on science. A long and wonderful trip, career-transforming, network building…

Deja vu all over again. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.
Canadian science under the Harper government from 2006 to 2015 was a horrific era of cuts and closures and muzzling and a whole lot of other attack on science.
One of the most egregious was the threat to close the PEARL…

The last one of these was in mid-June, so we're picking up all the summer stories of scientific mayhem in the Trump era. The last couple of months have seemed especially apocalyptic, with Nazis marching in the streets and nuclear war suddenly not so distant a possibility. But along with those…

After a bit of an unexpected summer hiatus, I'm back to regular blogging, at least as regular as it's been the last year or two.
Of course, I'm a committed Game of Thrones fan. I read the first book in paperback soon after it was reprinted, some twenty years ago. And I've also been a fan of the HBO…

Another couple of weeks' worth of stories about how science is faring under the Donald Trump regime. If I'm missing anything important, please let me know either in the comments or at my email jdupuis at yorku dot ca. If you want to use a non-work email for me, it's dupuisj at gmail dot com.
The…

More reads

Three statisticians go hunting for rabbit. They see a rabbit. The first statistician fires and misses, her bullet striking the ground below the beast. The second statistician fires and misses, their bullet striking a branch above the lagomorph. The third statistician, a lazy frequentist, says, "We got it!"
OK, that joke was not 1/5th as funny as any of XKCD's excellent jabs at the frequentist-…

“And there is the headlight, shining far down the track, glinting off the steel rails that, like all parallel lines, will meet in infinity, which is after all where this train is going.” -Bruce Catton
At the end of each week here at Starts With A Bang, it's important to take a look back at all we've gone through, and give some time and energy to all your thoughts on it. This week, there have been…

"I conclude, therefore, that this star is not some kind of comet or a fiery meteor... but that it is a star shining in the firmament itself one that has never previously been seen before our time, in any age since the beginning of the world." -Tycho Brahe
I want to take you back in history, back to the middle of the 1500s. Night skies were spectacular, even from the world's most cosmopolitan…